Truth Social
Truth Social (stylized as TRUTH Social) is an alt-tech[4][5][6] social media platform owned by Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), an American media and technology company majority-owned by former U.S. president Donald Trump.[7] It has been called a "Twitter clone" that competes with Parler, Gab, and Mastodon in trying to provide an alternative to Twitter and Facebook.[4][6][8][9] Truth Social uses Mastodon as its backend.[10]
Type of site
English and Portuguese[1]
October 20, 2021 in Sarasota, Florida
Worldwide
- Andy Litinsky[2]
- Wes Moss[2]
Required
estimated 607,000 monthly users (as of July 2023)[3]
February 21, 2022
Active
The service was launched on February 21, 2022.[11] Since mid-2022, Truth Social has been facing financial and regulatory issues. The application was initially not available on Google Play because of violations of Google policies prohibiting content with physical threats and incitement to violence, but was approved for Google Play in October 2022 after agreeing to enforce policies against incitement.[12]
As of March 6, 2023, it was ranked number 101 in Apple's App Store rankings for social media apps,[13] and SimilarWeb ranked its website as number 203 in their "News & Media Publishers" category, behind Gab at number 154, but ahead of Parler at number 1,052.[14][15] Trump estimated in an April 2023 personal financial disclosure that the site's value ranged from $5 million to $25 million.[16]
Digital World Acquisition Corporation (DWAC), the special-purpose acquisition company formed to fund Truth Social's parent company TMTG and take it public, disclosed in October 2023 that it was refunding to investors the $1 billion it had raised for TMTG.[17] A November 2023 financial disclosure by DWAC indicated that Truth Social had made a cumulative loss of at least $31.5 million since its inception.[18] In March 2024, DWAC shareholders voted to merge with TMTG.[19]
History
Background
Former U.S. president Donald Trump raised the prospect of building a new social media platform after he was banned from Facebook and Twitter in 2021, following the 2021 United States Capitol attack.[20] In May 2021, Trump launched "From the Desk of Donald J. Trump", a web page where he posted short tweet-like announcements; it was shut down after less than a month,[21] with Trump's senior aide Jason Miller confirming it would not be coming back.[22][23]
Inception
According to Reuters, two members of the cast of Trump's TV show The Apprentice, Wes Moss and Andy Litinsky, were "central" to the founding of Truth Social's parent company, the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), having allegedly pitched the idea of a social network to Trump in January 2021.[24]
Operations
Launch
Trump made the platform's first post on February 16, 2022.[102] That day, TMTG CEO Devin Nunes said he expected the platform would not completely open to the public until late March.[103] A beta test with 500 users was in operation during February 2022.[104]
On February 21, 2022, Truth Social was released on Apple iOS,[105] reaching number one on the App Store's top charts.[106][107] Due to an extensive backlog of applicants, upon downloading the app, about 500,000 people who initially attempted to register as users were automatically waitlisted.[108][109][110]
The app was installed 872,000 times during its first week, but a month later, new user signup had fallen to 60,000 per week. During that time, weekly visits to truthsocial.com fell from 6 million to fewer than 2 million.[111]
Upon its launch, the British automotive solar power company Trailar complained Truth Social's app logo closely resembled its "T" logo.[112]
The platform has been criticized for its poor performance at launch, with waitlisting users attempting to register and extended outages.[113] A day after its launch, The Washington Post described it as "a disaster".[108] A week after, Newsweek reported some early adopters were beginning to lose interest in the app due to low numbers of users and poor engagement, although others were willing to persevere with the app to see if things would improve.[114]
Audience growth
The Truth Social platform suffered from severe and persistent problems with scalability at launch, limiting the platform's growth.[115][116]
In early March 2022, multiple sources reported that Truth Social usage remained low, with Trump himself not having posted to his account since his first message two weeks earlier and his account having only 140,000 followers—less than 0.2% of the 90 million followers he had on Twitter before his account was banned.[88][115] The Daily Dot reported the Truth Social iOS app had fallen from the number one slot for downloads on the Apple App Store to number 84.[117] The Daily Beast reported Trump was dissatisfied with the social network's progress.[116][75]
At the end of March 2022, TheWrap reported that weekly installations of the Truth Social app had fallen from 872,000 in its launch week to around 60,000 per week, a reduction of over 90%. Visits to truthsocial.com had also fallen, from 6 million per week to 1.9 million. According to Sensor Tower, Truth Social had been downloaded 1.2 million times by late March.[118] In early April 2022, Bloomberg News reported that shares in Truth Social's publicly traded holding company Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC) had fallen 31% from the time of the app's launch in late February[119] and 64% from its all-time high.[120]
In early April 2022, Business Insider described Truth Social as "like a conservative ghost town that had been overrun by bots".[121] A U.S.-based reporter for the BBC attempted to sign up in early April and was placed on a waitlist with about 1.4 million requests ahead of him.[122]
On April 4, it was reported that Josh Adams and Billy Boozer, the platform's chief of technology and chief of product development respectively, had left the company.[60][23] A report in The Washington Post stated Truth Social was "falling apart", with problems mounting on multiple fronts.[123] A Guardian article compared Truth Social with Trump Steaks and Trump Vodka.[23]
As of late April 2022, MarketWatch reported Truth Social had around 513,000 active daily users, compared to Twitter's reported active daily userbase of 217 million.[124] Usership figures were not available, but Trump was reported on August 19, 2022, to have 3.9 million Truth Social followers. He had had 89 million on Twitter and 34 million on Facebook before being banned from both platforms.[125]
As of early June 2022, SimilarWeb reported Truth Social's iOS app as ranking #49 in the social networking category of apps on the Apple App Store.[126] As of October 2022, the iOS app had sunk to #75 in the social networking category.[127] During May 2023, SimilarWeb's ranking of the Truth Social iOS app fluctuated wildly, ranging from #18 to #153 in the Apple App Store social networking category during that period.[128]
Usage
Trump Media has not reported the number of Truth Social users. Data aggregator SimilarWeb estimated their number of visitors per month at 5 million in February 2024 and the number of active users in the U.S. at 1 million per month.[129] On March 25, 2024, the day TMTG's stock began trading publicly, Truth Social had 277,000 U.S. visitors, while Reddit had 32 million.[130]
The share price of the merged Truth Social company rose rapidly after the company was listed publicly, reaching a price that gave the company a nominal value of $4.48bn.[178] It fell over the subsequent days, losing 20% on one day alone after the announcement of the company's profit and loss results over the previous year.[179]
Trump remains unable to sell his Truth Social shares or use them as collateral until the end of a six month lock-out period.[180] The stock has been described as a "meme stock", with early price rises driven by speculators and small investors loyal to Trump.[181]